Partly cloudy, chance of storms

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released its latest study, "The Future of the Internet". The study summarizes the thinking from a wide-ranging survey of "technology leaders, scholars, industry officials and interested members of the public".

Key points for state government:

A majority polled believed:

At least one devastating attack on the Internet infrastructure or the nation's power grid will occur in the next 10 years.

More business and government surveillance will happen as the Internet becomes increasingly embedded in our everyday lives and machine-to-machine communication grows. I believe this could happen, but citizens will be better armed to thwart it too.

Thirty-two percent said:

People would filter out views with which they disagree. Pew said essentially the same thing with this report late last year. Again, this is a minority view. I find this a very subjective call that depends largely on how you view people now. I'm an optimist. Given the opportunity, people will seek out their own truths.

Online voting would be "secure and widespread" by 2014.

"Other reflections"

“Government will be forced to become increasingly transparent, accessible over the Net, and almost impenetrable if you're not on the Net.” This will occur in part because the 'Net will be used to organize and streamline government. There will far fewer desks, titles and offices to navigate. While this is currently a slow process, it will be impossible later.

“Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. The Net will wear away institutions that have forgotten how to sound human and how to engage in conversation”. Again, government bureaucracies are in for big changes in the next 10 years as government figures out how to apply the organizing power of the Web to solve work flow and management issues.

“The ‘always-on’ internet, combined with computers talking to computers,more profound transformation of society than what we've seen so far.” Subscribing to a Web logs is one example of machine-to-machine communications. XML coordinates the exchange of selected media. The people are increasingly "the media," capable of making their views known.

"The dissemination of information will increasingly become the dissemination of drivel. As more and more ‘data’ is posted on the internet, there will be increasingly less ‘information.’” I believe this will put a premium on argumentation and principle rather than the accumulation of facts themselves. "Data" is not privileged. Except in clear cut cases involving personal identity, secrecy in government will decrease.